Transforming Education is Key to Creating a Better World

I believe that it’s possible to create a just, healthy, and humane world; to develop sustainable energy, food, transportation, production, construction, and other systems; to end poverty; and to ensure that everyone has equal rights.

I believe that we can learn to resolve conflicts without violence; to treat other people and nonhuman animals with respect and compassion; to slow the rate of extinction; and to restore ecosystems.

And I believe – based on thirty years of experience – that there is a clear, practical, and positive path to achieve this vision.

My newest book, The World Becomes What We Teach: Educating a Generation of Solutionaries, shares that path.

The solutions to the problems we face will come when we effectively and wisely address a single system – schooling. As Mahatma Gandhi said, “If we are to reach real peace in the world… we shall have to begin with children.” The education of children is the root system underlying all other systems, and for the sake of our children and the world I believe that we must:

Adopt a more relevant and meaningful purpose for schooling.

Make schools real-world- and solutionary-focused.

Prepare teachers to educate their students to be solutionaries.

If we can successfully achieve these three goals, we will have created the best hope for thriving generations of people and a thriving planet….

Transforming our educational system won’t be easy, but I believe that it is the most important and strategic path toward creating more just, peaceful, and sustainable societies populated by healthy, happy, successful people. Because the world inevitably becomes what we teach, it’s up to each of us – whether we are teachers, school administrators, parents, grandparents, concerned citizens, legislators, entrepreneurs and business leaders, or any number of other professionals – to commit to transforming schooling so that it is truly worthy of children and genuinely worthwhile for the world they will both inherit and shape.

Find out more in my forthcoming book (from which the above is excerpted), coming out March 2016, from Lantern Books.

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About the author:

Zoe Weil

Zoe is the co-founder and president of the Institute for Humane Education
She's the author of several books, including Most Good, Least Harm; Above All, Be Kind; and The Power and Promise of Humane Education.
See her TEDx talk, "The World Becomes What You Teach": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5HEV96dIuY